As announced at the recent AMSAT-UK Colloquium, a ‘Certificate of Achievement’ and/or an amateur radio style ‘QSL’ card are now available online. Only those who have successfully received telemetry from FUNcube-1 AND uploaded it to the Warehouse are able to download these documents. The place to download them is amsatuk.me.uk, and chose the appropriate link (the bottom one).

The Certificate of Achievement is aimed at schools, etc, and the QSL card at radio amateurs who would like confirmation of their report. However, station operators are welcome to download both if they wish. Each is personalised with the callsign/name which has been previously registered with the Warehouse, and the date and time of the first packet to be uploaded by the requesting station is also added.

Having two live projects underway is proving an enjoyable challenge for the AMSAT-UK teams involved. Both the Nayif-1 CubeSat and our payload on ESEO will provide similar 1k2 BPSK FUNcube compatible downlinks so the teams have quite a lot in common.

Both teams got together for two days at BT’s Adastral Research facilities at Martlesham over the weekend of May 30/31st.

As will be more fully reported in the next edition of the “Oscar News”, the work concentrated on updating the suite of existing FUNcube software for the forthcoming Nayif-1 spacecraft and also the first power on for the combined CCT/EPS (computer and power) board for ESEO with its ATMEL AT32 microprocessor.

AMSAT-NL has just announced that an initial series of tests of the FUNcube transponder payload aboard the QB50p1 CubeSat have been successfully completed.

QB50p1 is one of two QB50 precursor spacecraft that were launched from Yasny in Russia in June 2014.

The primary science payloads are still being extensively tested but it has now been possible to undertake a short test of the transponder payload as well. The transponder is intended as a long term secondary mission following the initial technology demonstration and de-risking phase.

After spending ten months in space, the transponder was commanded on for short periods during each of the three morning passes over Europe on Monday 27th April 2015. A number of FUNcube team members in the Netherlands and in the UK were standing by to run through a predefined test plan.

The transponder has a similar performance to that of FUNcube-1 but the passband is nominally 5 kHz wider by design.

It is not yet known when this transponder may be available for regular usage but AMSAT-NL is delighted to be able to report that the hardware is functioning and is very grateful to the QB50 project, the Von Karman Institute and ISIS B.V. for their ongoing support.

AMSAT-UK and AMSAT-NL are delighted to announce that a FUNcube communications package has been selected as a major payload for the Nayif-1 CubeSat mission. This 1U mission is intended to provide Emirati students with a tool to design and test systems in space. It is being developed by the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) in partnership with American University of Sharjah (AUS).

It is expected that this payload will provide a large amount of valuable environmental data from space together with a new, enhanced, UHF to VHF linear transponder.

The AMSAT team will be working closely with the Emirati students, in collaboration with support partner, ISIS – Innovative Solutions In Space B.V. from the Netherlands, to develop this new system in time for the launch which is scheduled to take place towards the end of this year.

This exciting news was announced on the 25th of April during the Dutch “Interessedag Amateursatellieten” or “Satellite Interest Day” event in Apeldoorn.

More information, with details of frequencies and planned operating schedules, will be made available as soon as possible.

Graham Shirville, G3VZV, and ISIS System Engineer Adrien Palun, getting ready to listen to FUNcube-1 during their visit to Dubai in early April

On FUNcube-1 we have a good power budget which means that we should be able to maintain our normal autonomous operation schedule for the day but, of course, if the spacecraft does go fully into darkness it should switch autonomously to transponder and low power telemetry.

It will be interesting to see what actually happens and we hope that as many listeners as possible will upload the data they receive between 0740 and 1150 UTC on that morning. Our Whole Orbit Data will show the solar currents, battery voltage and external temps clearly during this period so we should get a clear understanding of the effects on board.

If anyone has some super software that can model the satellite’s track and the expected impact of the solar eclipse it would be great to hear about it!